EVANGELINE TANKFUL: A SPY IN RETIREMENT

Category Archives: fiction

I have decided to wrestle with a new blog template for my next 100 episodes. And “wrestle” I certainly did, even though I chose exactly the same template (twenty twelve) as I did nearly four years ago. (I tend to try to work out the controls solo and too much eschew the reading of instructions . . .)

Thank you Keith Garrett (of “Man of Many Thoughts”) who has found it already.

And a request to WordPress. Please develop a “translation widget” so that the non-English peoples, world-wide, can take more part. As things stand, the readership of all our blogs appears confined mainly to speakers of the English language.

Phew! I am done writing I think. And it’s time to submit my efforts to an agent. It has taken me quite some months to revise (and revise again) this, my first and on-line, draft. Apart from the obvious typos, there were – on many occasions – glaring faults with plot logic as well as gaping time gaps. I seem, also, to have yakked on far too much about gardening (my real occupation) as well as the historical situation in Kosovo!

It is a mission in itself to prepare a proper submission to an agent. The covering letter takes much thought and care, as does the brief summary and synopsis. The experience of penning the latter has given me the opportunity to ask myself if I really know what the story is all about! I have also had to prepare a writer’s CV and some testimonials. Thank you Josna and Peter for your glowing tributes to my efforts at dark comedy.

So we will see. I am as ready now as I ever will be. And if it still not my time, then I will just carry on!

Thank you for your moving expose on the nature of morality. Keep going!

I myself have departed from Especial Care Services. I did indeed feel this was necessary as I do not think they truly wished to hear any penetrating insights from me. The good news is that I have found a new position, even more out in the sticks than is usual. I have become (miraculously) an alpaca herdswoman . . . And in case you – as a convinced city dweller of the first order – have absolutely no idea what these are, I will enlighten you. Alpacas are smaller versions of the llama and, in case you are not very much the wiser, are clad in very woolly coats and disport large (and slightly exophthalmic) brown eyes.

My role involves the highly technical task of scraping their turds from off the turf; filling their water troughs/hay mangers, and placing handfuls of beef nuts in their feeding bowls (which are hung over the rails of estate fencing). I must say that these tasks do not necessitate one to be in possession of a high quantity – or quality – of intellect. But it seems that the alpacas are none too bright themselves, and only appear to be motivated by the rattling of feed inside a bright orange bucket. Honestly dear, one is practically knocked flat in the rush of animals stampeding towards their bowls.

Alpacas are, for the most part, not very chummy animals, but one exception to this is a female called “Sherbet.” Sherbet is quite inclined to sniff my hair as I extend my head towards her and allows me to stroke her long, fleecy, neck. One morning, she knelt beside me as I swept the stable floor, and the farm manager showed up.

‘However did you manage that?’ he said, gazing suspiciously at said Sherbert. ‘Did you give her sweets?’

I denied this dear, mentioning only the propensity that animals have for realizing that you intend them no harm. The other two animals with whom I have a slight relationship, are either very young or very old. I feed the underweight youngster with goat milk sucked from the teat of a lamb-feeding bottle. I sit it on my lap while it feeds and gaze at its extraordinary eyelashes and great big eyes. Its mother has mastitis and won’t let it suckle from her teats. She pushes it away and stamps her cloven feet. The old alpaca may, or may not be, blind and I notice that the bigger adults shove her away from the feeding stations. So I have started to call her by name – Meena – and feed her in a separate pen. These are the most warming aspects of my role (albeit the smallest and shortest ones).

And yet, like the gardening that I also engage in, it is a lonely place out in the fields with only the sky and trees and ‘God’ to turn to. There seem to be very few human beings around with whom I can share some small congress of the soul. And throughout my life it seems that this has almost always been the case. Even should anyone (at this late stage) show up to offer “love” – and, doubtless, immediate sex – I might eschew the “opportunity” and go on by myself.

I will write my memoirs – “The Truth versus Silence” – as, no matter the level of governmental opposition, I think the world will want to hear from a woman who has been the Chief of MI6. This was, perhaps, the thing I was born to do.

I have been engaged in one of those situations (at work) which give one pause for thought. It is now my second year of study at Carpool University Hospital and I have been allocated to a 6-week-long sojourn in the Coronary Care Unit (CCU). It can be pretty scary, as I expect you can imagine, to be surrounded by potentially blue-looking people and their bleeping paraphernalia. But one man, in particular, engaged my attention. He was in his twenties and had, apparently, had a late diagnosis of a heart condition called “Fallot’s Tetralogy.” I had to go home and look this up! It means that there is a hole between the two bottom chambers (ventricles) of his heart and that the wall of the right ventricle has become thickened under the strain of trying to push blood into narrowed pulmonary veins.

But the issue more to hand, at least to me, was that he looked like he might have an intestinal obstruction. I can say this with some degree of confidence Auntie, because he was only able to manage the occasional lick of ice cream, had a hugely distended abdomen and kept vomiting up (green) bile. So as a – still lowly – student nurse, I toddled off to the nurses’ station to informing the staff nurses of Mr X’s predicament.

But, do you know, they barely gave me an uninterested flicker of the eyelids – and a bored sigh – before returning to whatever notes they were penning in patients’ documentation. I have noticed this type of attitude in the so-called “professional” nurse before; they think they are too high and mighty to engage in some actual thinking – and can’t wait to condescend to someone they perceive to be of lower status. In the absence of any interest in the information I was trying to give, I slithered off to the sluice and occupied myself in some minion-style cleaning of metal bed pans.

However, on my cycle ride home (in the pouring rain and clad in my usual black – rubberized – outfit) I had time to think the matter over. And it did seem to me Auntie that, given the opportunity, I ought to try to do something to help this patient. But what? After all, I am a man who does not even have the funds to drive a basic automobile and who, likewise, has to listen to his music from a “Walkman” strapped to his belt!

The following day, I was on a “late” shift and so arrived on the ward at around 1300 hours. During the course of listening to the staff handover, it transpired that Mr Corcoran – the cardiac consultant – was due to come and do “a round” of the patients some time during the afternoon. A “flashlight” went off in my head at that moment Auntie, and I resolved to try to hang about on the fringes of this event.

It was at around 1500 that Mr Corcoran, plus entourage, swept into the CCU. He started to attend to every patient, in their turn, while a junior doctor expatiated on what they thought was going on. Thule was among them! Eventually, some twenty minutes later, they reached the bed of the patient with Fallot’s Tetralogy and it was obvious, from what I could pick up from the sidelines, that nobody had noticed that he might be obstructed.

I felt so enraged by what appeared to be serious neglect on the part of the qualified nurses, that I found myself speaking up. ‘I have noticed,’ I said, ‘that Mr X is virtually unable to eat and he has been vomiting bile for the past three days. The vomiting is projectile in nature.’

There was somewhat of a pause at this point as Mr Corcoran looked at the qualified nurse who, in turn, glared at me. ‘Has he?’ he said. He then went over to examine the taut, drum-like, abdomen of the patient, listening to it (for interior sounds) through his stethoscope.

‘This young man’ is quite right he said. ‘This patient needs to go off to theatre immediately.’

It was gratifying Auntie to see Thule smile at me from among the group of medical students and doctors gathered around the bed. But it was even more gratifying to feel that I had had the nerve to try to do the right thing, at the right time, and that my actions might result in the saving of someone’s life.

Of course, for the rest of the week, the backs of the qualified nurses were ostentatiously turned towards me whenever I was on duty. But not only were they wrong in the first instance, they have further shown their mettle in this additional display of unkindness. They have not learned. And I wonder what further sins of omission they could commit during the course of their qualified – and “professional” – careers?

I have had a recent success in a national poetry competition. I was awarded first prize for my poem Gran baciatore
which means “Great Kisser.” It contains much power and passion and maybe the judges liked it for its “liquid imaginings . . . ” In any event, winning meant that I had to travel up to Cottonopolis to read it to an audience of poets and other literati.

I wasn’t sure what to wear – bearing in mind the subject matter of my piece – but in the end decided upon an outfit combining both sense and sensuality. I wore a just-above-knee red (as in pillar box) dress; navy blue stockings (not that anyone would have known that); red high heel shoes, and a gold necklace with a sapphire at my throat.

It did occur to me beforehand that I would have to practice using a microphone, for there is nothing worse than a poet who comes on to the stage and reaches out a – visibly terrified – hand towards the stand. So I taped my kitchen mop to a table and rehearsed using it! This was time well-spent I think Mum, for – when I read my poem – you could have heard a pin drop and the audience looked mesmerized. I have been fortunate with my speaking voice; it has mellow and contralto tones and there have been times when I have aspired to become the voice of the UK’s speaking clock!

There was a reception afterwards, in a room notable for its glass ceiling and palms, in giant pots, which reached up towards it. There was also polished parquet flooring and leather sofas into which you could subside, if not sink out of view entirely. The usual array of poetry luvvies were in attendance and you could hear the occasional cry of, ‘Darling! How wonderful to see you!’ – cries which I feel may not have been totally sincere in every case. As I know myself, it is difficult to really feel thrilled for another prize winner if one has not recently one something oneself.

Anyway. At one point I was approached by a rather sad-faced man who said he was a librettist, and wondered whether he might be able to use the words in one of my poems for his latest cantata. (I have to say Mum, that I am not very sure what a cantata actually is, nor whether any of my poems might be suitable for being in one.) But at least Clive seemed scholarly and earnest and not, in any way, a similar style of man to Austen, my ex-husband, and Edgar, my ex-lover. In fact, he seemed the sort of man who might own a Bassett Hound; it was the red at the corner of his eyes and the drooping nature of his eyelids that made me think this.

I have given him my phone number (mobile) and he says that he will be in touch. I hope that he does not mean this literally, for too many men nowadays seem – and I know this is rather a change of subject matter – all too eager for sex in the first 24 hours of knowing one, while peppering their communications with strings of kisses. I have certainly come to feel – since Austen left – that it helps if one has at least met the man for dinner (at some neutral destination) and engaged in a series of actual conversations first.

I had one of my more perturbing experiences whilst out gardening the other day pet. During the course of bouncing down a lonely farm track – in a particularly secluded part of Corsettshire – at 0740, when light was faintly dawning, I had occasion to bounce past a group of men clad in flat green caps, just outside a farm. I also had occasion to notice a sizeable quantity of 4×4’s, and horse boxes, parked in an adjacent field. The men stared at me and I stared back. They were still staring down the track after I went past, en route to the large stone house, at the bottom of the track. The only way forward out of this spot is, naturally, down a mud-laden lane which meanders (in the wrong direction) through an overhead tunnel of trees.

Of course, just my luck, I was motoring along in my Citroen Dyane ‘Piebald’ clad in one of those woolly Nepalese hats (complete with plaits) – which certainly did not fit into any scene featuring country pursuits. Indeed, I looked like a large advertisement for ‘Hunt Saboteurs Inc.’ There was nothing for it dear. Once I reached my destination, I had to get out and start unloading the large consignment of silver-leaf Cineraria and Bellis perennis (the double daisy) which I had brought with me and were intended for an empty, south-facing, bed of soil.

There was rather a silence coming from the track from which I had just come, so I embarked upon some slight nonchalant whistling and kept my eyes directed well away from the gate and passing track. Eventually, parties of up to five horse riders (at a time) jogged past and they too seemed to be humming, with their eyes similarly averted.

I must say, dear, I breathed a sigh of relief when the last hunter (as in horse) had gone past and I began to embark on planting my double daisies in their stations. I also let the house Labrador out as he is one of those who is particularly prone to barking at even non-existent intruders. I was thinking that it would be such a pest if I had to get my old set of garotting cables out the car in order to defend myself against any huntsman who thought I might be a hunt informer. (I would have had to get up on a chair – given the virtually non-existent phone signal in this spot – in order to let anyone at all know that God knows what activity was being enacted in the locale of Deserted Wooded Valley.)

About half-an-hour elapsed (with no persons viewed anywhere about the house and garden) when I distinctly heard the sound of a hunting horn emanating from a large wooded copse about one mile off in the distance. And this was followed by the sound of yelping dogs . . . Oh dear. I thought. I hope I am going to be able to get out of here (intact). And, indeed, leaving was a slightly more demanding pursuit than usual owing to metal hurdles having been placed across the track and groups of land rovers being dotted over the hillside. However, I have to say that the metal hurdles were politely removed, as I approached, by the farmer and we both waved and said, ‘Cheerio.’ (I had, by this time, removed my woolly hat.)

The next time I saw the house and garden owner, I was feeling that perhaps I should address the situation in some way.

I said, “Do you know in advance when ‘sporting pursuits’ are being carried out in the immediate vicinity of the house?” I fancy the lady looked a mite uncomfortable when I said this, for she hastily assured me that such events only occur once a year and, hopefully, next year, I will be somewhere else!

I have just been over – after quite some hiatus – to see Granddad and Grandma, who are resident on a housing estate on the outskirts of Carpool.

The hiatus occurred subsequent to a conversation that I had with Granddad on the subject of immigration. Granddad is dead set against it and wants to ‘send them all back.’ And I, as you know, have a rather all-embracing attitude towards the nation’s newcomers.

So I said to Granddad – some moons ago now – ‘Well Granddad. You are one quarter Belgian aren’t you? When are you going back?’

Granddad, of course, went rather puce about the chops and retorted, ‘I FOUGHT IN THE WAR.’

The story he then related was rather an interesting one. He had apparently served in the Royal Berkshire regiment and, at the age of 18, had been sent to Burma, where he formed part of the Graves Registration Unit. The job of the Graves Registration Unit was apparently to depart up river – the Irrawaddy and tributaries – with the purpose of enquiring about the location of any British dead languishing in the vicinity of hill villages. Once they had ascertained the location of dead bodies, their job was then to mark the position of those bodies – with white crosses – before returning down river to Rangoon. A separate unit then went to collect the bodies for burial in military cemeteries.

Granddad ably described the suffocating heat and humidity in the Burmese jungle and the soldiers’ endeavours to sleep on simple charpoys fitted with mosquito netting. He also rendered up a rather rapt description of the virtually-naked Burmese women bathing under water falls in the Chindwin hills. ‘Ah. Those were probably the days,’ he said.

I didn’t actually know he’d done all that Auntie. Maybe he thought I was too young to cope with the graphic description of the stench from the rotting corpses he also spoke about.

On this visit to Granddad (and Grandma) however, things were a lot more pacific. We studiously avoided all mention of immigration and Granddad treated me to a tour of his garden shed instead. This environment was a virtual Aladdin’s cave of lathes and woodworking tools, and I have enclosed a couple of snapshots of them:

Granddad is somebody – as you can tell – who has a real shed with a collection of tools going back for nearly a century. But although his lathe is still standing proudly, in one corner, I don’t think it works now. Granddad says that they don’t make the narrow drive belts any more and the ends of his, I notice, are connected together by pieces of wire.

Anyway. I’d actually rattled over there (on the bus) in the hopes of securing some funds for tailored clothing to wear about the hospital. (It had occurred to me that I might better secure the romantic attentions of Thule, if I was able to promenade up and down the corridors in natty bow ties and fine woolen suits.) Sadly, however, neither Granddad – nor Grandma who, sadly, is camera shy – mentioned funds, and I had to make do with a plate of fish and chips instead!

Thank you for your enthralling epistle on the subject of chicken care. I am relieved not to have any chickens – and especially cockerels – in my own life. And please don’t – ever – put yourself down. You are becoming exceptional, and that is life’s largest skill of all.

It is Sunday morning here in Outer Hamlet and I have risen early with the purpose of attending the swimming pool. As my feet – clad in white plimsolls – padded along the pavement, I became conscious of that rather sweet smell redolent of warmth and rain and the slow composting of organic material which has fallen to the ground. A faint mist of rain was falling and the world was as quiet as any human being could wish for.

As I trekked across the recreation ground – and all the beheaded white clovers – I thought of how different swimming pools have become since the war. If you recall, Harriet, I was but nine years old when the war ended and, by then, had only experienced the occasional immersion in freezing cold municipal baths (for they were baths then). It is only since the Great War – when male recruits were deemed to be lacking physical fitness – that the emphasis has shifted from keeping clean to keeping fit. And indeed, before then, swimming baths were thought to be positively dangerous places harbouring the organism thought to cause polio. My own experience, as a child aged eight or so, was that the swimming baths were likely to be closed owing to the impossibility of obtaining an essential part – customarily made by men then fighting in the navy, air force, or army.

This morning, however, I have pushed and pulled my way through heavy doors, decked myself out in a rather appealing-looking turquoise swimming costume, and headed for the water. I have enjoyed my recent experiences of kicking through the water on my back, kicking through the water on my front, and treading water. It has also been most wonderful to exhale air at the ‘deep’ end, exhaling bubbles, and kick back up to the surface from the bottom. But something has been lost, I feel, from the ambience of the modern day swimming pool compared with that of earlier times. Depth for a start. It now would seem virtually impossible to drown in a contemporary pool as the water is so shallow and the pool dimensions so short and narrow. And do you remember the time when it was possible to actually dive into – the really deep – end from a spring board or a gradually ascending height of boards? But most of all I think I miss the blue, or green, ceramic tiles which lined the pool itself and the walls of the great buildings which housed them.

I know I have been gone a bit quiet recently, I’m sorry. Sometimes it feels necessary to recoup one’s forces and try to regain a sense of Life’s direction. I seem to be meandering about somehow. Perhaps I have become one of the world’s many dilettantes? A woman of no particular skills . . .

The only recent event of slight note has been my acquaintance, Kimberley’s, request to look after her chickens while she went off on holiday. I met Kimberley while out walking Ferris in Hyde Park and she seemed like a splendidly capacious woman, adorned in any number of brightly-coloured scarves originating from countries all over the planet. I agreed, anyway, to the chicken care – despite knowing that I would have to trek over the park twice a day, owing to the squeeze of traffic pressing on her residence and the fact that her own garage would be locked. No parking of my own Triumph Spitfire Mk IV therefore!

It all seemed fairly straightforward (initially) Mum. Kimberley’s neighbour, Basil, would let the chickens out and all I had to do was feed/water both the chickens and the plethora of hanging baskets suspended above the decking out back. However, there was a slight mention of Kevin (the cockerel) before she departed. The slight mention alluded to the fact that Kevin could play up and that ‘playing up’ would take the form of flying at you – talons bared – and beak agape – in an attempt to drive you away. Barry, Kimberley’s husband, actually demonstrated the grabbing of Kevin – and the whirling about of him above his head – while clutching hold of his feet! And Kimberley informed me that, in the event of difficulty, a stick would be left inside the run for me to use. I certainly didn’t feel up to the whirling of Kevin above my head option . . .

I have to admit, Mum, that I arrived before dusk (at 2150) on the first night and, do you know, chickens do not want to go to bed until the last gasp of light. I stood there, and they stood there, and it was very clear who was in charge and it clearly was not me. Eventually, the lower status chickens cleared off up the ramp and I thankfully dropped a plank against the door of the coop. Kimberley had, of course, been most conscientious in her mention of The Fox. The fox, apparently, lingers – just out of sight – at dusk, waiting to tear apart any unwary chicken who has not gone to bed in time . . .

Guess where Kevin and the Big White Chicken were Mum? Still running around the run, or at least, they were running away from me. Also, Kevin seemed very intent on getting his ‘leg over’ so-to-speak and this caused somewhat of a pang in my own breast, for even a cockerel gets to have more carnal congress than a recently-divorced woman aged 41!

Eventually, however, they did retire to the larger shed at the end of the run and this set up a further set of questions in my mind. I had not been the person to let them out of the coop/s in the morning and so I didn’t have the faintest idea where Kevin and co. laid their beaks to rest at night. Were they usually in the shed? My unease increased when I realized that there appeared to be no means of locking the shed for the night. There wasn’t a bolt or padlock on the door! In the end Mum – and in somewhat of a panic – I wired the door shut and leaned a full watering can, a spade, and a plank against the door as further obstacles to the ingress of The Fox.

I didn’t sleep well at home that night! I had terrible visions of this magnificent cockerel – and the Big White Chicken – being torn to pieces in the jaws of the local chicken predator – and just finding feathers and the remnants of a few limbs and wings scattered around in the dust when I next appeared.

However, the good news Mum, is that I only have to keep them alive for another five days!

You sounded decidedly more chipper on the telephone the other night. So your plaster cast is finally off! How are the ‘kicking sets’ going down at the Outer Hamlet swimming pool?!

I am writing to report on my latest attempt to engage the attentions of Thule. Despite a certain amount of loitering around the corridors of Carpool District Hospital, I never seemed to bump into her. And, then, just before last weekend I observed her in the act of appending her name to a list on the ‘Outdoor Activities’ notice board. I naturally waited until she was out of sight, before sleuthing up to see what activity she had signed up for . . . It was a trip (that very weekend) to Sunless Pot in the shire responsible for the Kendal Mint Cake. Auntie, I added my name, before galloping back to my bedsit to see whether my wet suit was in sufficiently good repair for me to pack in a bag. It was. Only one or two holes in the rubber!

The following morning, along with quite some motley crew of around ten people, I arrived in the canteen car park, prior to climbing into the mini van. Thule was there but, disappointingly, she seemed to be hanging about the person of a character called Dan: the potholing team leader. Dan, as I’m sure you can imaging, resembled – to my jaundiced eye – the sort of chest-beating gorilla that you tend to see on episodes of Tarzan. AH – AH – AH – AH – AH goes that yell, doesn’t it? She did manage a rather cursory hello to Yours Truly, but that was it. I slumped into a seat and proceeded be harassed, rather irritatingly, by the only other female on the trip. I don’t want to appear unduly prejudiced on the subject of appearances Auntie, but she did have buck teeth and, every so often, she gave out a sound of loud slurping. Uncontrolled salivation I think – not necessarily of the lubricious kind – but more related to some physiological anomaly or other. It was only by dint of changing seats after every motorway service station that I managed to shake her off.

It was certainly a long haul up the slopes of Sunless Fell to the pot, particularly as I was assigned to the carrying of about 200′ of electron ladder. This is the sort of ladder, Auntie, that is metal, flexible, and narrow to the point of only accommodating one foot on each of its rungs. At this point, I was rather wondering what I was getting myself into – particularly as, by then, heavy lead acid cell batteries had been allocated to each person, in addition to helmets clad in a sizable light. I think I had been envisaging a little saunter along minor horizontal tunnels!

Sweating, and doubtless puce about the chops, I finally toiled over the rim of the fell and the opening of Sunless Pot yawned before me: vast and black and apparently descending into a void without bottom. Frankly Auntie, I was all for throwing in the towel – especially when I saw the ladder, all 200′ of it – being rolled over the edge, but I couldn’t as Thule would definitely have noticed my ignominious scampering back to the bus. There was also a loud growling sound to be heard and this – peering slightly further down into the chasm – appeared to be coming from a waterfall in full fall. Black and white water was frothing from a ledge.

‘Surely we aren’t climbing through that?’ I chirruped from my vantage point.

‘It’s no problem mate,’ said Dan, flexing his biceps. ‘You can take a breath from under the rim of your helmet. I’ll just rope you on.’

God only knows Auntie, how I didn’t turn and run – craven – back down the slope, but all I can say is, that terror had me rooted to the veritable spot.

I submitted to being roped on and gaped down at the ladder.

‘It’s easy mate,’ said the irrepressible Dan. ‘Just keep your body straight and close to the ladder. It might flex a bit above and below you.’ And then he gave me a bit of a thumbs up and a bit more of a push.

Well Auntie. What can I say? Down I went, foot after foot, breathing from the small interstice of air beneath my helmet rim, as the water roared down upon me. The beastly ladder certainly does flex about and it took all the strength I had to cling on as I descended through the zawn.

And if you are asking me if Thule was worth it, then I can only say ‘Yes,’ in a way, because she patted me on the back later on – in the ‘duck’ section – and before the ‘sump’ section – and actually said that she’d seen me about the wards from time to time.

I will tell you about the ‘duck’ section and the ‘sump’ section in future reminiscences!